I watched the President speak today. Conflation was layered upon confabulation. He ridiculously tried to use American occupation of post World War II Japan has a model for Iraq. That’s so flawed as a model it’s hard to know where to start.
- We didn’t abolish all the instruments of the Imperial Japanese government. The kept their Emperor, police and government bureaucracy which insured stability.
- There was no significant popular uprising against American occupation, no bloody counterinsurgency.
- Without that opposition rebuilding post-war Japan into a modern industrial society was relatively painless and quite successful.
Japan became a steadfast ally in the Pacific as a result of a successful occupation and rebuilding. The President has repeatedly proven himself incapable of understanding the problem in Iraq and incompetent to manage the no-bid patronage bonanza reconstruction.
He moved on to point to Korea as another example. We didn’t win in Korea, it was a draw. There was no popular counterinsurgency bedeviling American forces. Thus we were able to nurture the growth and development of local institutions and representative democracy.
The only sort of (but not entirely) appropriate example was Vietnam. It’s hard to believe he even wants to link George’s Excellent Iraq Adventure to the perennial symbol of American defeat. We lost there, plain and simple. Not because we were beaten militarily, but because we lacked the national will to bleed indefinitely in midst of a local civil war. The situation was entirely different. We were facing a single, albeit often faceless enemy; proxies of the communist regime of North Vietnam. Is the President suggesting that we fight for 18 years in Iraq, watch thousands more young Americans bleed and die only to lose the political battle that truly defines the outcome in counterinsurgencies?
We thankfully lack the collective willingness to engage in the kind of brutality required to prevail in Iraq. The sooner we face that Iraqis, not Americans, will have to determine what kind of nation they want to fight and die for, the better off all parties will be. If we had only heeded the Dick Cheney of 1994.
I find it amazing that anyone, even the die-hard Bush loyalists, would find his combination of historical confusion and current hard-headed stupidity least bit compelling. How many days left until we are rid of this dangerous fool? The only upside to all of this is that it’s clearly shown the American public what the GOP stands for. They’ll spend a generation recovering from the Bush legacy.
Update:
TPM on the Korea Analogy.
Update II:
Scarecrow at Firedog Lake has more
